Youth Without Youth

Courtesy Sony Pictures / Cos Aelenei

Review in a Hurry:  An elderly linguistics professor (Tim Roth) regains his youth after being struck by lightning and then reunites with his lost love, who helps him research the origin of human language. A cerebral experiment with a disjointed narrative, Youth—despite that celestial bolt of a gazillion volts—never comes alive.

The Bigger Picture:  Pick a genre, any genre. Perhaps overcompensating for his 10-year absence from theaters, writer-director Francis Ford Coppola throws everything at the screen. The result is a slick-looking but frustrating hodgepodge of sci-fi, political thriller, period drama and metaphysical romance with heavy overtones of Eastern philosophy. Confused yet?

In 1938 Romania, 70-year-old prof Dominic Matei (Roth) wants to off himself, but before he can swallow strychnine, a lightning strike turns him into a crispy critter. At the hospital, Matei amazes Dr. Stanciulescu (Bruno Ganz) and staff with his speedy recovery, physical rejuvenation and highly evolved intellect.

His case captures the attention of the Third Reich, and just as the story starts to get kooky-cool with crazy Nazi spies in pursuit, Youth leaps years ahead to Switzerland, where Matei lives in exile. There, he meets Lancôme-gorgeous tourist Veronica (Alexandra Maria Lara), who apparently has the transmigrated soul of his late beloved, Laura (also Lara). Then Veronica gets struck by lightning while out sightseeing and starts thinking she's "Rupini," a 7th-century disciple of Chandrakirti. Still with us?

After recovering from that "paramediumistic trance," Veronica falls in love with the cunning linguist—but soon experiences late-night regressions, during which she speaks in ancient tongues. Though Veronica's episodes help Matei write his long-unfinished opus, they also take a toll on her youth and beauty.

Just as muddled as it sounds, Youth gets old real fast with its awkward plotting and a talky script littered with clunkers like "It's all so confusing; I'm afraid I'm going crazy!" Matei has a maddening number of convoluted conversations with his double/alter ego/evil twin/whatever, in shots that are sometimes canted, sometimes sideways, sometimes upside down and always annoying.

Long before this metaphysical mess is over, you might long to transmigrate your being into another theater.

The 180—a Second Opinion:  If you're a philosophy student or professor—or just a fan of cinematic masturbation—you might get off on all the symbolism (Lightning! Roses! Doppelgängers!) and endless chatter about matter and spirit, objective realities and multidimensional consciousness. Ommm...